Digging Up Women for International Women's Day (#people+uterus)*

A 20th century Antique beaded purse found in an Etsy shop.

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Like many women, I find I have to steal time in order to create. I've stolen a lot of time in my day... but, despite my efforts to fashion a life around my creativity, I find that I continue to feel as if I am forced to steal time.

I stole time to write this post... have to steal more time to complete it. I am a woman. By a long-held tradition my time is not my own... especially if I chose to be a mother, a wife, or a caregiver... or a woman trying to survive. But, as life would have it, in some way all women are in danger of becoming sacrificial lambs.

But, maybe, not all.

Inset left is a blade fashioned from quartz crystal. Thousands of years ago it belonged to a woman we now refer to as the Ivory Lady. I wonder about her times. I wonder if her time was her own. It may have been.

And, so, sisters, with this tiny light in mind we'll tip our hats to our singular allotted day, International Woman's Day... which, in terms of this foreword was yesterday. Oddly enough, during the past two days, the Global Day of Unplugging took place. Talk about really bad timing... was the date chosen deliberately to undermine and inconvenience women?

In which case, I guess we may as well take a few days for ourselves. 3's the charm.

This post goes out to all the archaeologists - especially the women - who made it possible or even feasible. As a little girl, I used to like to dig holes in the back yard when allowed. What was I digging for? I never really asked. Perhaps, I was looking for the vestiges of another little girl... who lived long ago... and made things.

(Make every day women's day.)

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Huge Collection of 270,000 Beads Unearthed in Copper Age Tomb in Spain

“Beads are a widespread and pervasive element of material culture produced by Homo sapiens, ”the study authors noted. “As excellent indicators of technology, social organization, exchange patterns, and even beliefs, beads are a topic of research in their own right.”

"Each was made by shaping a single seashell and boring a hole through its center. The huge number represents the largest single-burial assemblage of beads ever found in any grave site."

Buried in more than 270,000 beads, grave reveals women’s power 5,000 years ago

"The team found the majority of the beads in a large chamber of the Montelirio tomb, which held the remains of 20 people, including 15 women and five individuals whose sex wasn’t determined. A smaller chamber where two women were buried also contained beads.

... The researchers identified what they believe to be threaded beads that could have formed two full-body beaded tunics, skirts and other clothes or cloths of undetermined shape."

“They would have been extremely glittery under the sunlight and that would have been a very powerful effect to see these women standing in front of a crowd performing whatever rituals they were in charge of performing.”

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Before the advent of the photographic image, artists and artisans provided visual documentation of their times. Regarding very ancient times such as the Copper Age, artifacts (and bones) are generally all that remain.

The featured artifact in this archaeological story is the humble bead; not one, but over 2 hundred thousand of them! Many of them were found draped over and around a group of 15 female skeletons in a prehistoric Spanish tomb - Tholos de Montelirio - near to that of the so-called Ivory Lady (who was originally determined to be male). Apparently, there are 5 additional bodies whose genders have yet to be determined because their bones were crushed.

But, while the beads and the majority of bones withstood the test of time, merely a few scraps of fabric were in evidence and while the beads are thought to have decorated clothing, there are few clues as to how the clothing was really fashioned... or what the beaded garments represented. What we can determine is that they were expensive and time consuming to create. And, by this, we can deduce that the entombed women were highly regarded; they were special in some way.

Many of the beads were created from scallop shells... which may have been devotionals for a marine goddess such as Aphrodite, Astarte, Ishtar, or the moon goddess Innana to whom the hymn excerpt (below) was addressed.

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"The day is auspicious,

The priestess is clothed

in beautiful robes,

In womanly beauty,

As in the light of the rising moon."

- Via Enheduanna's Hymn to Innana (c. 2300 BC), reposted from an earlier Woman's Day article.

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And, there are some reasons to believe that the women were priestesses. For one, it would explain why they were all interred in one tomb, sporadically, over a period of years.

Then, too, we are given an interesting description of one of the bodies...

(Continued below the jump...)

"Individual UE343, a female aged 24 to 32 years at the time of death, must have been a very special person. Not only she wore what seemingly was a full-body beaded tunic, but also she was also placed at a prominent location in the tomb... on the path of the narrow projection of sunlight that came from outside on the summer solstice, and with both her arms raised above her shoulders and head, in a gesture frequently described as “oranti” in the literature on European late prehistory."

- A quote sourced from the full Science Advances research article, A multi-analytical study of the Montelirio beaded attires: Marine resources, sumptuary crafts, and female power in copper age Iberia.

Notably, of the bodies disinterred, #UE343 had the least amount of mercury poisoning.

Mercury poisoning? Alas, yes. But, no, it's unlikely the women were deliberately poisoned. The mercury that leached into their bones came from the cinnabar they used as a red pigment everywhere from their skin to the painted walls of the tomb.

Also see this comprehensive source. And, here's a gorgeous Egyptian bead-net dress.

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The Lady of Elche (Dama de Elche, Dama d'Elx)

The Lady of Elche (above) was carved in limestone circa 4th century BC. She was discovered in 1897 on a private estate in the vicinity of Elche, Spain. Her identity, however, remains a mystery. Goddess, queen... or merely a dignified aristocrat? She is now exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid. 

The statue above has been estimated to be a funerary urn - which can support the idea that she represents a deceased person, but several smaller, similar figures have also been found. (See here.) So, whoever or whatever she represented was important.

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"There were clearly differences in the way men and women were honoured in burial, but it is hard to say whether this is reflected in social structure...

García Sanjuán said he wanted to investigate whether the society at Valencina was a matriarchy during this period, a time when a more hierarchical society was beginning to emerge in Europe.

'Matriarchy has been a very controversial concept in history and anthropology, but I am quite keen now to tackle it head-on, because I think it’s just not chance that we are seeing repeatedly these cases at this time, you know, between 2900 and 2600 (years BC) of all these great, very, very high standing, powerful women.'”

- Leonardo García Sanjuán, a professor of prehistory at the University of Seville and lead study author. Inset right is a painting entitled Jephthah's Daughter by French painter, James Tissot. The daughter was sacrificed by her father. (See burnt offering.) Note the girl's headdress.

When García Sanjuán refers to matriarchy as "a very controversial concept in history and anthropology" he isn't exaggerating, he's understating a fact. In Wiki's entry for matriarchy we find:

"Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal, at least no matriarchal society that have completely excluded the opposite gender from roles of authority."

In other words, anthropologists define a matriarchy in terms associated with the patriarchy: dominance and exclusion. In my eyes, this is where the argument fails.

Meanwhile, the Wiki article goes on to list a number of essentially matriarchal societies.

Also see: Matrilineal societies exist around the world – it’s time to look beyond the patriarchy

For articles regarding other recent archaeological discoveries citing ancient women:

'Powerful, maybe even frightening' woman with diadem may have ruled in Bronze Age Spain

Excavation near Jerusalem finds 9,000-year-old six-fingered Neolithic shaman woman

5,000-year-old ‘Ivory Lady’ upends what’s known about sex and gender in prehistoric societies

Here Are 6 Major Archaeological Discoveries That Suggest Ancient Women Were Waaay More Powerful Than You May Believe

Four of the Most Incredible Ancient Female Burials in Archaeology

Ancient DNA from graves reveals "jaw-dropping" discovery about Iron Age women in U.K., scientists say

Ancient Peru: New discoveries highlight women's rule

The Invisibility of Prehistoric Woman

Tomb Containing Three Generations of Warrior Women Unearthed in Russia

Also see (on this blog): the Lady from Lavinium.

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ruth weiss from her film, One More Step West is the Sea.

There is no such thing as an end. I believe in the spiral that keeps on going."

- Quoted: Beat poet, actress and filmmaker, ruth weiss (1928-2020), found here.

"... Elise (Cowen) was Allen Ginsberg’s last female partner before he met his life partner Peter Orlovsky. However, she was more than Ginsberg’s shadow, it was Elise who typed the motherly poem Kaddish, and her transgression was unbearable for her neighbors who burned her writings seen as lewd in order to hide them from the girl’s parents."

- Excerpt from Larissa Oliveira's excellent article, Introduction to the women of the Beat Generation, in which we discover the existence of a number of Beat women we may have been unaware of previously. Although many were married to Beat writers they were authors, poets, and artists in their own right. To name a few: Elise Cowen, Hettie Jones, Joyce Johnson, Diane di Prima, Joan Vollmer, Edie Parker... and green-haired goddess, ruth weiss (quoted above).

"and so young women

here’s the dilemma

itself the solution:

I have always been at the same time

woman enough to be moved to tears

and man enough

to drive my car in any direction"

- From the poem, Hard Drive, by Hettie Jones, 2016.

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This third and last section is not so much an ancient story as it is the theme of a multitude of stories: women go missing from our cultural records and it is generally left to other women to find them again.

In the case of the Beat women, we're discussing mid- 20th century, AD, but the song remains the same. I can't imagine that all those Beat girls who became involved with Beat men realized they were dooming themselves to near obscurity, but when William Burroughs shot Joan Vollmer in the head in 1951, his was (metaphorically) the definitive act of the Beat generation.

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"... I found out that many women before me had broken through female roles and made themselves into successful, independent and creative people. Yet the struggles and successes of one generation did not necessarily guarantee greater ease to the women of the next. Instead of the work of one woman attesting to the potential of all women, the work was ripped out of its natural context by male historians. One historical period would allow women more freedom... Then male dominance would assert itself again. The women's achievements would be left out of recorded history, and young women could not model themselves upon the struggles and accomplishments of their mothers." 

Above is a quote from contemporary artist, Judy Chicago, which I have posted and reposted over the years. It is a quote which every thinking woman should keep in mind for no truer words have ever been written about women's autonomy.

Most especially now, in 2025, women are again in danger. All it takes is one tyrannical, misogynistic male in power to begin this process of erasure.

I'll leave you with this recent abomination from the Trump administration:

NASA Ordered to Remove Anything About ‘Women in Leadership’ From Its Website

"NASA is working to comply with President Donald Trump’s crusade targeting diversity and inclusion at federal agencies, reportedly scrapping key terms from its websites related to accessibility, indigenous people, women, and other topics deemed “wasteful” by the current administration."

Translated: Donald Trump's anti-DEI hysteria is directly related to his war on women and the feminine in general.

The Medal of Honor Recipient Erased in the Pentagon's DEI Purge

Case in point: the male warrior who was "gay."

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* New (3/16/2025) via the NYT:

These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration

Below are a few of the (many) words that government websites have been ordered to "avoid" or abandon... specifically those which, in any way, suggest or promote DEI (human diversity, equity, and inclusion):

"female, females, feminism, people + uterus, pregnant people, pregnant person, pregnant persons, women, women + underrepresented"

My personal favorite is "people + uterus". I think it needs deserves a hashtag!

Note: It also deserves further analysis... in other words, what does it actually mean? Are we avoiding reference to people who have a uterus as opposed to the people who don't... "people - uterus"?

If all of the above sounds inane (f not totally insane), we merely have to consider the source.